Hollins University is one of 42 member colleges and universities selected by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) to comprise the Consortium on Digital Resources for Teaching and Research.
Hollins and other consortium members “will be able to increase their capacities to store, preserve, and catalog collections of digital images, documents, audio and visual files, and other types of materials while streamlining administrative capabilities,” explained CIC President Richard Ekman. “Consortium members will be able to improve teaching and learning and enhance faculty and student/faculty research – on their own campuses and/or more globally – by making lesser known or hidden collections searchable and accessible.”
Ekman added that the consortium will employ Shared Shelf, a cloud-based uniform digital platform that is already used by institutions such as Harvard University and Cornell University. Over the next four years, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will subsidize use of Shared Shelf by consortium members as well as team participation in three workshops. This summer, consortium teams will meet with Shared Shelf implementation managers to familiarize themselves with the platform, digitize and catalog their collections and other materials, and come together to share their experiences and insights with other teams in small group webinars.
Hollins’ first project will be to digitize and curate thematic collections of images from a classics professor’s photographic archives. These include some rarely photographed objects such as the Hellenistic painted grave stelai and engraved details from the site of Demetrias-Pagasai.
Hollins, Hampden-Sydney College, Roanoke College, and Washington and Lee University are the consortium’s four participating institutions from Virginia.
